Delhi Police has spent an exorbitant amount of Rs. 300 crore in paying the rent of the vehicles that it has hired in the last six years.
As per data collected by the department, in the last six years, it has hired 400 cars and paid Rs. 300 crore as rent while in the same amount, the department may have purchased 2800 vehicles. This is shocking news considering the fact that Delhi police is already going through financial crisis and staff shortage.
Praja Foundation conducted a study and as per results, the strength of policemen employed in various locations of the Capital was less than the strength which was sanctioned and this deficiency in numbers ranges from 45 to 545.
As per the RTI documents, a copy of which is available with the Mail Today, Rs 295.66 crore has been paid by Delhi police to Jay Pee and Co (WZ-424, Raj Nagar, Palam Colony) as rent for 350 Gypsies and 50 SUVs for the time period of Jan 2010 to March 2016.
The automobile experts who don’t want to disclose their names have condemned this act of Delhi Police and said,
“With this amount, the government and police officials could have bought 2,800 SUVs, or purchased 400 SUVs for Rs 50 crore and spent the rest on other programmes.”
Other than this, for the same period, the Delhi police has also paid Rs. 37.22 crore as rent to other firms for using their CNG LCV/ Tata 407, buses and mini buses.
As per the data available, M/s Sneh Tourist Corporation was paid Rs. 2.06 crore for 40 buses.
Rs. 42.93 lakh was paid to M/s Narbada Travels for 10 mini buses.
Rs. 91.08 lakh was paid to M/s Makhan Singh, M/s G T Roadways and M/s Rajendar Singh for 23 CNG LCV/Tata 407.
When the senior officials of Delhi Police were contacted by Mail Today regarding the matter, their response was that they ‘are not the authority concerned to speak on it’.
82 cranes of capacity 1.4 tonnes to 2.3 tonnes and 52 small cranes of 2 tonnes capacity have also been employed by Delhi Police for the purpose of lifting the vehicles and towing them.
An amount of Rs. 3,600/day and Rs. 2,100/day is paid by Delhi Police for each large crane and each small one, respectively.
An RTI activist from Trilokpuri, Zeeshan Haider, says,
“The huge amount spent by Delhi Police to rent vehicles raises question on why the force did not buy its own vehicles with that amount.”
He further said,
“The police and government could have bought 400 SUVs for Rs 50 cr. Also, they could have purchased more than 2,000 AC/Non- AC SUVs in the same amount they hired private vehicles because AC vehicles are allowed as per the protocol for A-grade officers and other officers are allowed to use non-ac vehicles.”
Last year, a report got published which talked about the department’s community policing scheme, ‘Yuva Prahari’ and how it was facing problems due to fund shortage and volunteers were also not getting the stipend.
This scheme was launched by B S Bassi who was the police chief at that time and he called it ‘unique active community policing scheme’ in which the trained youth used to accompany the PCR teams when they do patrolling in their locations.
Mail Today was told this by Sneh Tourist Corporation,
“Through tenders, we are allowed to arrange vehicles for the Delhi Police. We provide them on contract basis and keep renewing those tenders.”
In Feb 2016, the High Court slammed Delhi Police for not being able to install camera in all the police stations of Delhi. However, the deadline for this purpose was June 2015, as fixed by the Supreme Court. And even before the SC gave the deadline, the cameras that were installed in the police stations didn’t have the recording feature.
One thing that we should not forget is that Delhi Police comes under the Central government and not under the State government, so Kejriwal government has nothing to do with this exorbitant expenditure. This data is from 2010 to 2016, so from 2010-2014, it was Congress party which was playing this dirty game and from 2014 till 2016, BJP continued it. In short, no matter whose government it is, the hard-earned money of tax-payers is going down the drain.
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